


Days of Ghosts and Card Games

by Bigsisnat533



Series: Harry Potter x Shaperaverse AU [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Dolls of New Albion: A Steampunk Opera - Shapera
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cults, Doesn't really follow the HP storyline, Gen, Mechanical Dolls, More Dolls-oriented, No Horcruxes, Not Canon Compliant, Resurrection Stone, The Tale of the Three Brothers, but not quite DoNA's storyline either
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23726254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bigsisnat533/pseuds/Bigsisnat533
Summary: In the middle of his sixth year, Tom Riddle learns to bind souls into mechanical husks of bodies. With this innovation, he finds more and more ways to bridge the gap between life and death, seeking new ways to achieve immortality and gain power. Soon, droves of these resurrected dead populate the wizarding world, giving rise to new subcultures and future generations of Voodoopunks and Death Eaters alike. As the times grow darker, the citizens of the Wizarding World find that the only way to end this never-ending game of death and war is for one who plays to sacrifice.A story told in four acts:Act 1 (Tom): Chapters 1-4Act 2 (Severus): Chapters 5-8Act 3 (Lily): Chapters 9-12Act 4 (Harry): Chapters 12-16A Dolls of New Albion-based Harry Potter AU.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Tom Riddle, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape, Lily Evans Potter/James Potter
Series: Harry Potter x Shaperaverse AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708966
Comments: 6
Kudos: 2





	1. Tom: A Gambler and a Monk Played Cards

### Act 1

_“Years ago, a monk and gambler embarked  
On a long trek right through the great lands of the North  
They had a debate about God, chance, and fate,  
And agreed it be settled through just one card game…”_ \- “The Ballad of the Gambler and the Monk” 

The grandfather clock in the corner of the office ticked tirelessly, a continuous drone of background noise as the man sat at his desk, playing what seemed like a never-ending game of cards with his student.

The young boy in front of him—young man, almost, as the teacher remembered that his student was no longer an eleven-year-old—glanced at his hand of cards, a calculating look in his eye. His right hand traced the top edge of the cards delicately, before selecting one and placing it on the table in front of him. He set the rest of his hand face-down, close to himself, twisting the ring on his left hand and watching his Transfiguration professor closely. 

Dumbledore thought about the cards he’d already laid out on the table before him before playing another of his own cards. The two alternated turns until each had a small subhand of cards in front of themselves, as the two idly discussed classes and chance and magic. Tom glanced at his large pile of candy, then at Dumbledore’s dwindling one. He pushed a handful of the candies to the center of the table; Dumbledore emptied the few he had left into the betting pool. Tom stared at the bright yellow sweets in the center of the table as Dumbledore pulled his hand back. If his teacher lost this hand, he would also lose the game.

The two flipped over their concealed piles of cards simultaneously. Tom glanced at Dumbledore’s hand and frowned almost imperceptibly. The old fool had won the game with an extremely unlikely set of cards, seemingly picked at random, that nevertheless promised automatic victory in that specific game. 

“Ah,” Dumbledore said jovially, collecting the candy from the center of the table, “it appears I got lucky.” He glanced up at his student, surveying his reaction. 

Tom pushed his pool of candy over to Dumbledore and allowed himself a small smile. “I suppose I’m not one for sweets anyway.” 

Dumbledore swept the lemon drops back into a dish and started picking up the cards. Tom drummed his fingers on the table lightly, in perfect sixteenth notes against the clock.

“Do you believe in fate, Professor Dumbledore?” Tom asked with only the slightest tilt of his head, as he collected the cards in front of him into a pile. “That something out there is pulling the puppet strings, so to speak?”

Dumbledore frowned slightly before looking back up at his student with a smile. “Tom, I firmly believe that we create our own fates, although I suppose in some way we are all affected by others just as we affect them with our own actions.” 

Tom placed the collected cards back on top of the deck. He frowned, deep in thought. “But it all ends up the same, though, doesn’t it?” he ventured. “No matter what you do.”

Dumbledore paused. “Perhaps, if you wish to think about it that way. But it is also the nature of being human, and perhaps there is some new adventure waiting for us beyond that final horizon.”

Tom gave a low hum as he straightened the deck, unsatisfied with this. Dumbledore seemed to read his intentions and frowned. 

“It wouldn’t do to live your life in fear, Tom,” Dumbledore warned. “Nor to reject that which makes us truly alive, just as ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’ warns us of the futility of attempting to overcome death.” 

Tom dropped the icy scowl that had been growing on his face as Dumbledore looked back at him. “‘The Tale of the Three Brothers,’ sir?”

“Oh,” Dumbledore said, looking a tad guilty for the first time in their encounter, “forgive me Tom—it is a Wizarding children’s story, one that warns us that it is not possible to cheat death—the best we can do is accept it as the next step in our journey.” 

“Hmph.” Tom turned the ring on his left hand idly. “I see.” 

The young man stood up from the table. “As always, thank you for the game of cards, professor,” he said, giving Dumbledore a polite but indifferent nod, his thoughts in other places.

“Good night, Tom.” 

~*~

The next day found Tom in the library, an open copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ in front of him, next to several books of literary criticisms and history of the author.

_“So Death picked up a stone from the riverbank and gave it to the second brother and told him that the stone would have the power to bring back the dead.”_

Tom scanned his other books, ones he was using to cross-reference the existences of the three Hallows. Perhaps it was foolish to be trusting so heavily in a children’s tale, but all stories were born partially in truth, were they not?

_“Beedle’s iconic tale has long been speculated to be about the ancient Peverell family, a line of purebloods now extinct by name.”_

That was certainly a new lead. Thus far, the criticisms and analyses he’d been reading had erred on the side of safety, attributing the story to an intriguing piece of symbolic fiction and nothing more. The Peverell family; that was certainly nothing Tom had heard of before—not that he was intimately familiar with many pureblood descent lines, no thanks to his own heritage—but he finally had something possibly bringing the story into reality. He continued reading the section in that particular book. He finished the article and gazed at the small illustration decorating the bottom of the page, a small frown marring his face. It was a small symbol that hadn’t been included in the original storybook he’d been referencing, but it was one that seemed very familiar. 

Tom looked back and forth between the ink on the page and the shallow engraving on the stone on the ring on his finger almost blankly. 

_“Here he took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in his hand. To his amazement and delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped to marry, before her untimely death, appeared at once before him.”_

Tom removed the ring from his finger and traced over the engraving delicately with his thumb. If there was a chance his suspicion was true, this was certainly not the place. 

The next day, Tom faked feeling ill to get out of dinner with his posse, then snuck into an abandoned classroom with his ring and copies of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ and the book on the stories’ histories he’d found so helpful, which he’d checked out of the library on his way out the night before. 

He gently pried the stone from the setting on the ring—he would have bigger concerns than resetting the stone in the ring if he succeeded—and took it in his hand, turning it over to look at it. He glanced back to the open copy of “The Tale of the Three Brothers” and, burning with curiosity that overshadowed his fear, cast about to think of the first dead person he knew and could think of. 

He turned the stone over three times, just as the story instructed, and waited. The pale shadow of a woman flickered into existence before him, hazy and undefined, vanishing nearly as quickly as she came. Tom looked down at the stone in his hand, then back up at the empty space where the vague shade had appeared, slightly disappointed in the underwhelming result, but his mind racing in excitement at the fact that it had worked: he held the fabled Resurrection Stone in his hand. 

It was possible to bring people back from the dead, even if it was only temporary and as unsubstantiated shades. Surely there was a way to bring the soul back permanently, if he only tried.

~*~

“Please have fifteen inches written by our next class on the properties and qualities of Inferi, as well as defensive strategies against them,” Professor Merrythought said. “You are dismissed.”

The usual hum and buzz signaling the students’ departures filled the room as they filtered out of the Defense classroom. Tom packed his textbook in his bag and stood up from his seat, his small group of followers filing out behind him.

Inferi. In his relentless thirst for learning as much about this world, this world that he preferred so greatly to the one of his birth, they were still nothing he’d heard about before. A reanimated dead body could be useful if he could get past the idea of dealing in cadavers.

Since that day when he found out that he possessed the Resurrection Stone from Beedle’s story—how could he have not realized he had such a powerful artifact resting on his person all this time?—he had made it his personal goal to find a way to bind the weak shades it produced back to the mortal plane. The soul’s brief return was only part of the equation—there needed to be a physical vessel to attach the soul to.

As he set about working on his Defense essay later that night, he mulled over the possibility of using a corpse as a vessel for the soul. After all, the human body was the most natural vessel for a human soul to inhabit. If it was possible to reanimate a corpse, why not take it a step further and add the soul back to the mix.

But no, something like the Inferi wouldn’t be practice in this situation. He still had school left to finish, and if Tom feared anything more than death, it was being prematurely evicted from the closest place he’d ever have to a home. He was sure that Professor Dumbledore was already suspicious of him—why else would he invite tom to a weekly game of cards or chess?—and gathering cadavers and bringing them into Hogwarts was sure to get him expelled.

Perhaps an inorganic surrogate, then? He’d heard of the concept of Horcruxes, putting pieces of souls in objects, and had it confirmed as a hypothetical by Professor Slughorn the year prior (although he hadn’t yet been able to find instructions on how to make one). Surely it would be possible to bind a whole soul in an appropriate vessel, would it not?

He finished his essay and packed it away neatly, glancing around the common room. His gaze landed on Clarence Dehoff, a fellow sixth year and descendant of a minor pureblood family, who’d recently lost his father. Glancing down at the empty gold band of his own family ring, a plan started to form in Tom’s mind.


	2. Tom: I Have a Dolly

“ _And so around three AM,  
A recently deceased man  
Found himself wound in the land of living again…_” - “Annabel Has a Doll”

Tom sat down at the Slytherin table in a different spot than usual on Tuesday morning.

“Dehoff,” he said, turning to the boy next to him. Clarence Dehoff was tall and lanky and pale, with the calculating, cat-like eyes of a true Slytherin. He was pureblood—the type of person Tom wanted to associate himself with—but not so influential that it would get him into trouble if things went south. 

Clarence narrowed his eyes at the other boy. “Riddle. What do you want?”

“I wanted to talk to you about your father. You lost him just this last summer, did you not?”

Clarence made a face. “What are you playing at?”

“Isn’t it natural for a prefect to check up on his housemates?”

“You’re a Slytherin, Riddle,” Clarence replied. “Same as me. We don’t do things out of _altruism_. What do you want?”

A small smile touched Tom’s face. “I want you to help me with a project of sorts,” he said. 

“Go on.”

“Here’s not the place. Let’s just say that if we’re successful, you won’t have to face your grief anymore. Meet me in the old classroom in the dungeons tonight.” His cards were on the table, now to see if his play would work.

Clarence looked him up and down. “Alright, Riddle. I’ll see what you have to offer. But I won’t promise anything after that.”

Tom’s smile grew a touch wider. “Of course not.”

He turned to his breakfast, ending the conversation.

~*~

In the weeks after his revelation with the Resurrection Stone, Tom had been working to find a way to make an artificial body. It would be ideal to have a fully functioning form eventually—if he was going to use this method to retrieve himself from death (which was not exactly ideal, but it was closer than before), he certainly didn’t want to be stuck in a body that couldn’t move, much less perform magic. However, if he was going to try to achieve this while he was still at Hogwarts—while he still had the expansive library and all of his acquaintances to exploit—all the body had to do was prove that it contained a soul in some way. Aside from that, it could be nothing more than a glorified doll.

He had slowly been assembling pieces and parts and storing them in the abandoned classroom he’d been using as a workspace: accumulated copies of The Daily Prophet, flour stolen from the kitchen by more expendable, less favored hands, and salt collected from the dinner table to papier-mâché the head; Transfigured joints; empty food sacks from Care of Magical Creatures filled with nothing but scraps for the body; sticks and broken broom handles for the arms and legs. He’d been careful to make the body durable but easily disassembled—it would be far too difficult to hide a fully constructed body, but nobody would question the classroom being used for simple storage of mundane items.

A small, removable cage of sorts would sit in the middle of the chest cavity, an artificial heart to house the soul within the larger body. He’d also filched a radio to use in the main body, something he was hoping to connect to the soul cage, a way to hopefully give a voice to the shade, or at least some sort of outlet for the soul to prove its presence. He was banking on the shade being able to hear and understand him. Similarly, Tom had also attached an unwound pocket watch to the cage, hoping that the energy of the captured spirit would be enough to move and power it.

He’d also been working on researching spell creation—he figured that, like a ghost, those shades would not be able to be trapped physically. The brother in the original children’s story hadn’t been able to touch his loved one, after all. Therefore, he would need to find a way to magically bind the soul to the doll. While looking into the etymology of the spells he’d already learned had been somewhat enlightening, Tom also knew there was much more to a spell than the incantation and wand movement, and for once he had not yet been able to find a solution in the Hogwarts Library. Not much had been written about the properties and manipulation of souls, especially not in the main section available to students. 

Thankfully, before he had found the Resurrection Stone, he had been able to find insights and instructions on the process of creating a Horcrux—something he had been looking at doing before and continued to consider as a backup even now. Unfortunately, the particular book that he had found his instructions in had been removed from the library. He had written down notes before, in his own carefully-coded hand, but it was rather irksome that he no longer had a primary source to rely on. Still, he had enough information that he hoped he would be able to manipulate and alter the process of making a Horcrux into what he needed to bind the soul shades to his doll: the concept was similar enough. 

In order to create a Horcrux, one had to first rend their own soul through murder, a step that Tom would be able to skip in this instance—he was not using his own soul for this process. Next came the actual act of removing that split piece of soul and binding it to whichever object they wished to be their Horcrux. This was simple enough: a singular (though advanced, Dark, and almost certainly painful) spell. He had been working through the etymology of the spell (unlike most spells, this one was a tad more complex and featured a variety of languages); he knew that with the right wording and enough intent, tweaking this spell would be easy enough. The only obstacle he foresaw was being able to find time to test the spell until he got it right—he could not bring anyone back for himself as more than a faint outline, which was irksome at best, so he needed to have someone else around to summon their own ghosts long enough for him to get it right.

The third step in creating a Horcrux was to protect the object and strengthen it with various combinations of Dark spells and curses, making it difficult for someone to destroy it. Tom was not particularly concerned with protecting the Dolls after he’d created them: they were not his soul, after all, and he didn’t much care what happened to them as long as they stuck around long enough to prove the concept, and using too much Dark magic here at Hogwarts would certainly draw attention. (If he used these to bring himself back from death, though, he would invest in a much better body and one protected against destruction.) 

For now, Tom would focus on wording the necessary spell as concisely and accurately as possible—from his limited experience with the spells in his Charms classes, he knew most of them were simply loose translations of whatever the spell was intended to do, but there were also a few that were finicky and would never be achievable with a synonymous incantation.

~*~

Tom and Clarence walked into the abandoned classroom together. Bits of bric-a-brac were strewn everywhere, and to Clarence, it looked like any other storage closet (if a bit messier). Tom walked into the room, set down his bookbag near the table at the center of the room, and began scrounging around the room for the disassembled body parts he’d hidden amongst the shelves. Clarence frowned and stepped into the room, adjusting his own bag on his shoulder and watching the other boy set parts down on the table. After a few minutes of silence, Tom turned around to face Clarence, the Resurrection Stone clutched in his hand.

“Tell me, what do you know of the ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’?” Tom asked. 

Clarence made a face and raised an eyebrow. “The children’s story? About people failing to cheat death? You brought me here to discuss fairy tales?”

Tom sighed. “No. I brought you here to dispel the notion that the story ever was a fairy tale.” He held the stone out in his palm, offering it to the other boy. 

Clarence took the stone from Tom warily, eyeing it and inspecting the engraving on its surface. “What is this?”

A smile graced Tom’s lips. “Turn it,” he instructed. “Three times.” 

Clarence complied, if a bit hesitantly. The shadow of a man appeared in front of the two boys, hazy at first, but solidifying into a figure who looked almost touchable. The man was the spitting image of Clarence, perhaps a bit broader and more mature, his brown hair a shade darker than his son’s, streaked with a little gray. Despite himself, Clarence couldn’t help but gape at the shade, then at the stone in his palm, before regaining his composure and turning back to Tom as the shade disappeared. 

“This is what I need your help with,” Tom said, interrupting any incredulous statement that might have come out of Clarence’s mouth. “With your help, I can bring people back for good, and you can have your father back.” 

Clarence’s eyes darted from the stone in his hand to the parts on the table, arranged loosely in the shape of a body, connecting the dots. “And what’s in it for you, huh?”

A sly smile crossed Tom’s face again. “Nothing but the satisfaction of seeing it brought to completion.” 

Clarence considered the stone again, thinking, before holding out his hand. “Alright, Riddle. You’ve got a deal.”

~*~

The next evening found Tom and Clarence once again in the abandoned classroom. Clarence stood at the table, assembling the body according to Tom’s specification, as the other boy paged through the notes he made regarding the proper spell.

Clarence attached the last piece to the body, its mechanical heart, and stepped back to admire his handiwork. The body wasn’t anything particularly special, being made of detritus from around the castle, but it looked vaguely human and would do the trick for now. Its eyes were hollow and dark; its head was nothing more than a glorified papier-mâché mask. This head was attached to a broken broom handle, stuck through a mostly-stuffed animal food sack to act as the body’s spine. Its limbs, likewise, were made of sticks attached to the torso with joints Tom had Transfigured out of garbage.

“There,” said Clarence. “Are you ready?” 

Tom took out his wand, glanced back at his notes, and nodded once, standing up to stand next to Clarence. He took the Resurrection Stone out of his pocket, handing it to the other boy carefully. Clarence turned the stone three times in his hand. 

The shade of his father emerged before the two boys, and Tom pointed his wand at it, a fierce look in his eye. 

“ _Coligo Spiritus_!” he cried, carefully executing the wand movement he’d deemed most likely to succeed and concentrating on keeping the shade in front of him in this plane of existence. A faint glow emerged in the shade’s chest, and it looked at itself in surprise. After minutes of chanting, though, the light faded along with the shade. Tom let out a growl of frustration. 

“I could feel it,” Tom said, glaring at the empty body before them. “It knew what I wanted it to do, but it didn’t know where to go.” He sighed, looking back at his notebook. “Some adjustments are in order. Give me a minute.”

A few minutes later, Tom had drafted a new incantation, one that would be more specific towards what he wanted. Clarence summoned forth the shade of his father again. 

“ _Coligo Spiritus_ ,” Tom chanted, “ _Coligo Dollay_!” 

This time, a faint light appeared in the shade’s chest and the mechanical heart’s cage. As Tom’s chant grew in intensity, the shade was drawn towards the body, but it was far too late. By the time it reached its target, it had already faded back into nonexistence. 

They were far closer, but it was not strong enough. On their third try, it was determined that both of them would recite the incantation: the spell would be strengthened not only by the number of people casting, but also by Clarence’s intent—he wanted this just as much as Tom, only for a much stronger reason. He called forth the shade of his dead father once more.

“ _Coligo Spiritus_ ,” they both chanted, “ _Coligo Dollay_!”

‘ _Please come back to me_ ,’ Clarence prayed. 

The light appeared. The shade was drawn into the cage at the heart of the artificial body, and the light faded as Tom and Clarence went silent. A crackle of static filled the air, accompanied by the faint ticking of the previously defunct pocket watch settled in the mechanical heart. A soft tune began to play from the radio, though its words were nigh indistinguishable. But it had worked. 

Clarence had a Doll, and Tom had a new lackey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey hey! It's me, and I finally got another chapter of this finished :D Sorry it's been slow--I kind of lost interest in this over the summer and fall, but I found my notes sheet for it and it renewed said interest. That being said, I can't really promise regular updates, because I know I have that nasty habit of Not Finishing Things. However, I am going to be posting a lot of information about this on Amino (http://aminoapps.com/p/cjy9wg), including an outline of the story. That's probably not a typical move when it comes to posting a story chapter-by-chapter, because spoilers, but in case I fall off the face of the Earth and never finish this fic, at least you'll be able to find out how it ends. The spell is probably poorly-translated Latin mixed with Paul Shapera's lyrics from the _Voodoopunks_ song(s).

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy, here we go! Another source material x some other unrelated musical AU, but this time it's not necessarily where one follows the exact storyline of the other. It's more half-and-half this time, with major changes no matter which canon storyline you're following (Dolls or HP). It's a lot closer to DoNA, but it's not like Butterbeer Betrothal where they're following exactly.


End file.
